Jessica Backhaus, Photography from the Series Jesus and the Cherries

Gisèle Freund was her mentor and she worked as part of David LaChapelle's team, but photographer Jessica Backhaus has developed her own poetic visual language.

The German-American photographer Jessica Backhaus has portrayed the village of Netno and its residents in Northern Poland.

With a sure eye and an unusual color language, she points out the distinctive aesthetic of details she encountered: plastic flowers and crocheted pillowcases, images of saints and lace doilies, and cherries preserved in mason jars.

The intimate character of the images suggests that the photographer must have developed a special relationship to her subject: In Backhaus’ photographs we feel the warmth, cordiality, and authenticity with which she was received in Poland. The photographer’s clear gaze captured the beauty of everyday details and moods. Jesus and the Cherries describes a Poland still a long way from the modernizations that the full integration in the European Union will bring. Jessica Backhaus thus tells a tale of traditional ways of life that may already belong to the past.

Jessica Backhaus was born in Cuxhaven, Germany, in 1970. At the age of sixteen, she moved to Paris, where she studied Photography and Visual Communications. Here she met Gisele Freund, who became her mentor. In 1995, she went to New York, where she assisted the photographers Francois Halard, Michel Comte, and Patrik Demarchelier. Since 2000, she has worked as a freelance photographer in New York. Her work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London, in New York, in Paris and other European cities. this titled one day in August C-Print Ex. 1/15 40 x 56 Format